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The Maxwell School
>> Political Science >>
Christine Mahoney
Research Projects
I. Advocacy in the United States and the
European Union
My project Brussels vs. the Beltway: Advocacy in the United States
and the European Union is the first large-scale empirical study of
lobbying in the US and the EU, two of the most powerful political
systems in the world. Policies emanating from these two spheres have
global impacts; they set global standards, they influence global
markets, and determine global politics. Everyday, tens of thousands of
lobbyists in Washington and Brussels are working to protect and promote
their interests in the policy-making process.
The book investigates the strategic decisions those lobbyists make
throughout the advocacy process. Each chapter details how institutional
structures, issue-specific characteristics and interest-group factors
blend to determine decisions about: how to approach a political fight,
what arguments to use and how to frame an issue, what direct or inside
lobbying tactics to employ, what public relations or outside lobbying
strategies to use, and finally, in what networking and coalition
activity to engage.
It is not only what lobbyists do in these two political systems that is
interesting of course, but also to what effect. The last substantive
chapter looks at how the same set of factors - institutions, issues and
interests - affect lobbying success. Drawing on in-depth interviews with
150 advocates in Washington D.C. and Brussels, Belgium, as well as a massive
store of case information on the random sample of 47 policy issues, the
book uses rigorous empirical analysis to investigate the determinants of
lobbying decisions and policy outcomes. Using publicly available
information, each case was followed for more than a year after initial
interviews to assess the outcome from the perspective of each advocate,
allowing a systematic assessment of who got what they wanted, who did
not, and who fell somewhere in between. The analysis blends qualitative
evidence with quantitative statistical analysis to demonstrate that
advocacy can be better understood when we study the lobbying of interest
groups in their institutional and issue contexts.
II. Building Civil Society from the Ground Up: Collective
Action among the Displaced
My second major project is investigation the mobilization of civil
society among displaced populations. When violent conflict results
in massive forced migration, communities experience a complete breakdown
in social order. During displacement, either across borders or
internally within a country, the displaced are faced with collective
problems. In certain situations the displaced have mobilized and
organized to solve the problems they encounter, in other situations
malaise sets in and collective action problems are not
overcome. International, national, and local NGOs play an important role
in understanding when the displaced mobilize and when they do not.
This project lays out a theoretical
structure explaining participation in collective action among the
forcibly displaced and tests that theory through a multi-country,
pan-regional study of displaced populations in 9 countries (Field work
has been completed in: Croatia, Thailand, Uganda, and Colombia; field
work in Tanzania, Kenya, Sri Lanka, Nepal, and Azerbaijan will occur in
2009-2010).
The research considers the barriers to mobilization
that the collective action literature has traditionally recognized as
well as the hurdles that are unique to situations of forced
displacement. The factors that influence civil society participation
(either positively or negatively) can be grouped into four aspects of
the displacement situation: the human security context; the legal
context; the cultural context and the duration context. In addition,
activity by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) is a major determinant
of collective action among the displaced and forms the fifth category of
factors to be studied.
III.
Argumentation Tipping Points: Individual and Collective Framing in the
European Union
How an issue is understood
fundamentally influences the outcome of a policy debate.
If
one idea of an issue takes hold it can determine what interests
mobilize, how many mobilize, whether the governing party supports or
opposes, and if there is an all-out battle or a quiet compromise.
Getting everyone to debate an issue “on your
terms” can dramatically improve your chances of getting what you want.
So a goal of any skillful advocate is to get
your idea to catch on, to reach the tipping point that your way of
thinking isn’t just one way of thinking, it is
the way of thinking.
So how is it that one
dimension or frame, or a few, come to dominate on any given issue, even
though most issues have many dimensions and could be discussed in
countless ways?
What is the process by which individual
level framing attempts aggregate and a single dimension and frame
dominate?
Is the macro-frame simply determined by the
sum of its individual parts, or are their other factors at play?
How
long do reframing processes take; can an issue be re-defined during the
debate on a single policy proposal or is it something that takes
decades.
Until now, it has been terribly difficult empirically to investigate
these questions but the accessibility of large stores of issue and
position documentation and the development of new computer assisted text
analysis allows us to map the process by which hundreds of individual
discussions of an issue aggregate to produce collectively dominant
frames. This project lays out a
strategy for theorizing, and collecting, coding and mapping the process
by which ideas tip.
The project is part of a broader collaborative project that I am helping
coordinate which involves scholars at 15 universities in the US and the
EU.
IV. The Power of Institutions: State and
Interest-Group Activity in the European Union
This project investigates the ways in which government activity, or
demand-side forces, influence interest mobilization and formal inclusion
in the policy-making process in the European Union. Drawing on an
original dataset of nearly 700 civil society groups active in the
European Union, the analysis provides empirical evidence of three routes
by which the EU institutions influence interest group activity: (1)
direct interest group subsidy; (2) manipulation of the establishment and
composition of formal arenas of political debate; and (3) broader,
system-wide expansion of competencies and selective development of
chosen policy areas.
The
interest groups dataset can be downloaded
here.
The
consultative committee dataset can be downloaded
here.
The
codebooks can be downloaded here.
V.
Trans-national NGO Project
I am also affiliated with the Transnational-NGO project in the Moynihan
Institute of Global Affairs, led by Peg Herman, Hans Peter Schmitz,
Bruce Dayton and Derrick Cogburn. Interviewing 180 T-NGOs about their
organization, activities and accountability this project is aimed at
better understanding how NGOs working across borders operate, why and
how they might do so more effectively.
The project website can be found
here.
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